Trip to Gardner-Webb has Coastal Carolina’s focus back on football

Members of the Coastal Carolina football team have had a lot to think about over the past two weeks.

A scheduled bye week was preceded by an agonizing 59-58 loss in double overtime to Charleston Southern at Brooks Stadium on Oct. 1.

The Chanticleers then had a full nine days off – with only a few of those days planned – courtesy of Hurricane Matthew, which forced the team to vacate the campus.

Many traveled back to their homes, and many rode out difficult situations with their families and/or friends in storm-impacted areas before they returned to practice Tuesday and were allowed back on campus Wednesday.

The Chants (3-2) have had a few days to reacquaint themselves with football and turn their attention to Saturday’s trip to Boiling Springs, N.C., to take on Gardner-Webb (3-3), which has won two consecutive games.

“We know they’re going to be ready for us. We know it’s going to be a good game,” CCU head coach Joe Moglia said. “We’ve got to make sure we’re ready and I’m confident we will be. I think our heads are in the right place. I think we’ll be ready to go.”

G-W, coming off a 24-3 win over Presbyterian in its Big South Conference opener last Saturday, received only rain and relatively mild wind from Hurricane Matthew on its campus about an hour’s drive west of Charlotte.

“We had heavy rain for a little bit but we were not affected,” G-W head coach Carroll McCray said. “We’ve been prayerful about those that have and those that have been displaced, including coach Moglia and his team.”

The Bulldogs began the season 1-3 with three consecutive losses before defeating Benedict 45-0 and Presbyterian. Their last two losses came by a touchdown to Citadel, which is ranked eighth in FCS, and by just 16 points to FBS program Ohio of the Mid-American Conference, which it outgained in the second half.

“We tried to build on the good things and get rid of some of the bad things that had held us back as a football team,” said McCray, a G-W alumnus. “I credit the kids and the coaches to sticking to our fundamental things.

“We played a pretty competitive ballgame against Citadel, which is a good team, we just did not close and had one really bad special teams play. In the Ohio game we let them jump on us early but we played very well in the second half, and our kids settled down and made some plays.”

Junior quarterback Tyrell Maxwell (6-2, 220), a product of Edisto High, posted 377 total yards last week against Presbyterian (1-4), completing 7 of 12 passes for 222 yards and a score and rushing 11 times for 155 yards and a touchdown, including an 89-yard run that set a Big South record for the longest run by a quarterback. He has more than 1,500 rushing yards in his career.

“We need Tyrell to play steady and the biggest thing we’ve worked on is to try to help him with the run game so he’s not the leading rusher,” McCray said. “We need our running backs to pitch in and I’d like for them to be carrying the load in the run game, and what we can work on is to improve our play-action pass and for him to fundamentally be a better pitcher so our receivers can be catchers. … We need him to be pretty balanced for us to have a chance offensively, that’s for sure.”

G-W has knocked off four teams ranked in the FCS top 15 since McCray’s tenure began in 2013, though none of them was CCU. The Chants, who are ranked 16th in the current STATS FCS poll, have defeated G-W in each of Moglia’s first four seasons by at least 20 points.

The Chants are 11-1 in their past 12 against the Bulldogs, are 6-0 at G-W’s Ernest W. Spangler Stadium and are also 11-2 all time following bye weeks. CCU’s last loss to G-W was 26-24 in David Bennett’s final season as its head coach in 2011.

Coastal’s two losses have come by one point each to Charleston Southern and Jacksonville State, which are both ranked in the top 10 in FCS, despite losing starting quarterback Josh Stilley to a season-ending knee injury in the first half against JSU.

“We’ll really have to work to improve ourselves to put our kids in position to see if we can pull the trigger and make some plays to keep us in this football game,” McCray said.

This story was originally published October 14, 2016 at 3:58 PM with the headline "Trip to Gardner-Webb has Coastal Carolina’s focus back on football."